Geotech Geol Eng (2015) 33:161–166
DOI 10.1007/s10706-014-9815-y
TECHNICAL NOTE
Seismic Stability of Gravity Retaining Walls Under
Combined Horizontal and Vertical Accelerations
Xinpo Li • Lijun Su • Yong Wu • Siming He
Received: 9 May 2014 / Accepted: 27 August 2014 / Published online: 12 September 2014
Ó Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
Abstract The seismic sliding limit condition of
gravity retaining walls with cohesionless soil backfill
is investigated and analytical solutions for the critical
acceleration coefficient are provided in this paper. The
solutions have been derived in the framework of the
upper bound theorem of limit analysis. The retaining
walls and the backfill soil are taken as a whole system
and the combined action of horizontal and vertical
accelerations are considered. For retaining walls with
horizontal backfill, the effects of the inclination of the
wall internal face and of the soil–wall friction were
investigated. The effects of vertical component of the
seismic acceleration on the yield horizontal acceler-
ation coefficient were discussed in detailed. Based on
a limited parametric study, it is shown that both the
roughness and inclination of the internal wall face
have some effects to the seismic stability of the wall–
soil system. And under some conditions, the effects of
vertical acceleration are considerable large and can’t
be neglected.
Keywords Limit analysis  Gravity retaining wall 
Vertical acceleration
X. Li (&)  L. Su  Y. Wu  S. He
Key Laboratory of Mountain Hazards and Earth Surface
Process, CAS, Chengdu 610041, China
e-mail: lixinpo@imde.ac.cn
X. Li  L. Su  Y. Wu  S. He
Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, CAS,
Chengdu 610041, China
1 Introduction
Earth retaining walls are very common and important
geotechnical engineering structures, especially in con-
nection with the protection of transportation facilities
and/or nearby structures. Seismic analysis and design of
earth retaining walls is a difficult problem, which
traditionally requires the determination of the dynamic
soil pressures induced by the soil seismic motion on the
wall. To compute the active earth thrust acting against
retaining walls in seismic conditions, the Mononobe–
Okabe method or its extensions are most widely used
(Okabe 1924; Mononobe and Matsuo 1929; Richards
and Elms 1979; Nadim and Whitman 1983; Zeng and
Steedman 2000). The Mononobe–Okabe solution treats
earthquake loads as pseudo-static, generated by uniform
acceleration in the backfill. The retained soil is consid-
ered as perfectly plastic material, which fails along a
planar surface, thereby exerting a limit thrust on the
wall. The method has prevailed mainly due to its
simplicity and the familiarity of engineers with the
Coulomb method. However, the Mononobe–Okabe
method presents a basic shortcoming: the solution is
based on the limit equilibrium of the soil wedge without
taking into account the presence of the wall. So
Caltabiano et al. (2000) suggested a new solution based
on the pseudo-static equilibrium of the soil–wall system
and applied it to seismic stability analysis of retaining
walls with surcharge.
Limit analysis method can also be used to
avoid this shortcoming of Mononobe–Okabe method.
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Li et al. (2010) used the category of upper bound
theorem of limit analysis to consider the seismic
stability of soil–wall system. A method based on limit
analysis for calculations of yield acceleration and
seismic displacements of multi-block structures
(including retaining wall) was suggested by Micha-
lowski (2007). The upper bound approach of limit
analysis was also used by Chen (1975), Škrabl and
Macuh (2005), Yang (2007) and Ausilio et al. (2000)
to consider the problem of seismic retaining structures.
The fact that vertical acceleration has a significant
effect on the seismic behavior of retaining walls or
reinforced slopes had been pointed out by many
researchers (Richards and Elms 1979; Ling and
Leshchinsky 1998a; Ling et al. 1997). Ling and
Leshchinsky (1998b) investigated the effects of ver-
tical acceleration on the seismic design of geosyn-
thetic–reinforced soil structures. Ingles et al. (2006)
conducted the effects of the vertical component of
ground shaking on earthquake-induced landslide dis-
placements using generalized Newmark analysis and
infinite slope model. Sawicki et al. (2007) proposed a
method enabling assessment of seismic-induced
movements of gravity block.
Chen and Liu (1990) pointed out that in seismic
conditions, active earth pressure coefficients obtained
using the M–O method and the limit analysis theorems
are in a close agreement since the log-spiral slip
surfaces obtained by limit analysis are almost planar.
Approximately planar slip surfaces were also observed
in dynamic model tests carried out on shaking tables
(Watanabe et al. 2003) and in centrifuge (Nakamura
2006).
In this study the whole soil–wall system is inves-
tigated using a two-wedge approach and limit analysis
to highlight the influence of the wall and of the base
friction on the plastic mechanism. The upper bound
approach of limit analysis is applied to calculate the
yield acceleration of the system undergoing direct
sliding failure. Both the horizontal and vertical
component of ground motion is considered in the
analysis. The computed results of yield acceleration
are compared with methods based on limit equilibrium
analysis. The closed-form solution may be found
useful by engineers in the displacement-based seismic
design of retaining walls. In all the analyses the
backfill soil is assumed to be homogeneous, dry and
cohesionless.
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2 Method of Analysis
The kinematic theorem of limit analysis is applied
here to analyse the stability of walls retaining backfill
soil under seismic loading. This theorem state that a
slope will collapse if the rate of work done by external
loads and body forces exceeds the energy dissipation
rate for any assumed kinematically admissible failure
mechanism. Applicability of the theorem requires that
soil will be deformed plastically according to the
normality rule and the convexity of the soil yield
condition.
The forces acting in the soil–wall system consid-
ering both horizontal and vertical components of the
seismic acceleration are shown in Fig. 1a. The rate of
work done by the gravity forces is the vertical
component of the velocities multiplied by the weight
of the wedges
W_ g ¼ Ws V0 sinða  uÞ  Ww V1 sin db ð1Þ
where a is the angle that planar failure surface makes
with the horizontal, u is angle of internal friction of
backfill soil, Ws and Ww indicate the weight of soil
wedge and retaining wall, respectively, V0 and V1 are
velocity jumps along the slip plane and the base, and
db is friction angle between retaining wall and the
base. Once the system is subjected to seismic loading,
the rate of the inertial force needs to be accounted for
in the energy balance equation. The rate of work due to
horizontal acceleration takes the form (Li et al. 2010)
W_ sh ¼ kh Ws V0 cosða  uÞ þ kh Ww V1 cos db ð2Þ
where kh is seismic coefficient representing horizontal
acceleration as a fraction of the gravity acceleration.
And the rate of work due to vertical acceleration is
W_ sv ¼ kv Ww V1 sin db  kv Ws V0 sinða  uÞ ð3Þ
where kv is seismic coefficient representing vertical
acceleration as a fraction of the gravity acceleration.
Herein, the ratio of vertical to horizontal seismic
coefficients is expressed by a dimensionless parameter
k (i.e., k = kv/kh). It should be noted that the value of k
can be positive (which means kv is considered to act
upwards) or negative (which means kv is considered to
act downwards). Substituting the expression of k, the
Eq. (3) can be rewritten as
W_ sv ¼ kkh Ww V1 sin db  kkh Ws V0 sinða  uÞ ð4Þ
Geotech Geol Eng (2015) 33:161–166 163

Fig. 1 a Translational failure mechanism of retaining wall with backfill soil. b Velocity compatibility between adjacent blocks and
velocity hodograph

Since there is no cohesion along the slip surface and From Eq. (7) and Fig. 1b, we obtain:
the retaining wall base, energy dissipation is zero, the
energy balance equation yields cosðdb þ d þ bÞ
V0 ¼ V1 ð8Þ
cosðu þ d þ b  aÞ
  
Wg þ Wsh þ Wsv ¼0 ð5Þ
where d is friction angle between retaining wall and
Submitting (1)–(4) into (5) gives backfill soil.
Substituting (8) into (6) and rearranging the terms
ð1  kky ÞWs V0 sinða  uÞ þ ky Ws V0 cosða  uÞ leads to the following expression
 ð1  kky ÞWw V1 sin db þ ky Ww V1 cos db ¼ 0
Csindb  nsinða  uÞW
ð6Þ ky ¼
Cðcosdb þ ksindb Þ þ nW½cosða  uÞ  ksinða  uÞ
where ky is the yield acceleration coefficient of the ð9Þ
failure mechanism respect to angle a.
For a kinematically admissible failure mechanism, where for convenience the symbols
some relationship should be satisfied between the cosðdb þ d þ bÞ 2Ww
velocity V0 and the velocity V1. Let us observe the two n¼ C¼
cosðu þ d þ b  aÞ cH 2
adjoining wedges as shown in Fig. 1b. The left and ð10Þ
cosðb  iÞ cosða  bÞ 2Ws
right wedges move with the absolute velocities V1 and W¼ ¼
cos2 b sinða  iÞ cH 2
V0 which incline at angles db and u to their bases,
respectively. The relative velocity of the left wedge are adopted, with C denoting the dimensionless
with respect to the right one along the interface is weight of the wall; typical values of C are in the
represented as V01, which inclines at an angle d. To range 0.6–1.2. The critical seismic coefficient is
allow the velocities assigned to the wedge failure obtained by minimising ky, with respect to a. This
mechanism to be kinematically compatible, the two means taking the first derivatives of ky and equating
adjoining wedges must not move to cause overlap or them to zero, i.e., (qky/qa) = 0. Solving this equa-
indentation. This implies that the velocity hodograph tion and substituting the value of a, the least upper
must be closed, i.e., bound value of yield acceleration factor is calcu-
lated. This critical value of ky is indicated in the
V0 þ V01 ¼ V1 ð7Þ following text as kc.

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Fig. 2 Effects of of b and d on lateral acceleration coefficient kc for different values of u
3 Results and Discussions
3.1 Effect of b and d
From the point of a theoretical analysis, the internal
face of the wall can be vertical (b = 0) or inclined at a
positive or negative angle to the vertical (b = 0).
However, negative batters is almost never imple-
mented in practice, whereas larger batters (more than
10°) may be more relevant. So a range of 0°–20° is
adopted in the plot showing the effect of b on kc.
Further, in most cases the wall is not perfectly smooth
and when failure develops, wall sliding shear stresses
are mobilized at the contact surface between the soil
wedge and the wall. This frictional interaction has
been considered by introducing an angle d to the
velocity interval between the wall and soil wedge.
Figure 2 shows the variation of kc versus b for the
dimensionless weight C = 0.8 and for different values
of u and the ratio d/u. Generally, when u increases,
corresponding to more stable systems, higher values of
kc are needed to bring the soil–wall system to limit
condition. Further a remarkable dependence on d is
also observed. For the case of u = 30° and i = k = 0,
when d = 1u/2 is adopted kc is about 0.16 while when
d = 0 (the internal face of the wall is smooth) the wall
can only sustain a seismic horizontal acceleration of
about 0.09 g. The effects of b are also very impressive
except the case that the wall is smooth (d = 0). When
the wall faces are rough (d = 1u/2 and u), the effect
of b is very remarkable and the system is more stable
with larger angles of b. Furthermore, it is shows that
when the value of u and d is considerable large the
effect of b on kc is apparently more remarkable than
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when angles u and d take smaller values. These results
indicate that in the design of retaining walls, the wall
geometry should be determined according to the
smoothness of the internal face especially when the
internal friction angle of backfill soil is high.
3.2 Effect of kv
The vertical component of the seismic acceleration
affects the limit condition of the soil–wall system.
Caltabiano et al. (2012) presented a method based on
seismic limit equilibrium analysis of sliding retaining
walls under different surcharge conditions. The effect
of the vertical component of the seismic acceleration
on the yield horizontal acceleration coefficient was
investigated. Under the case of retaining wall with
vertical and smooth face (b = d = 0), they came to
the conclusion that the effect of the vertical compo-
nent of the seismic acceleration on the limit equilib-
rium condition is small and can be neglected. Herein,
the vertical smooth wall and rough wall with inclined
internal face are investigated.
Figure 3 shows the variation of kc versus k for the
dimensionless weight C = 0.8 and for different values
of u, b and the ratio d/u. This ratio is assumed to range
from -0.5 to 0.5 as suggested by seismic codes (e.g.,
Eurocode8 [37]). It can be seen from the figure that, for
the case of b = d = 0, as expected, the effect of kv on
kc is rather small. But it cannot be neglected that the
varying ranges of kc shows a remarkable dependence
on u and that angles b and d also have some effects on
it. It is observed from Fig. 3 that when the values of u,
b and d are considerably large the effect of kv on kc is
rather large and cannot be neglected. Take the case of
Geotech Geol Eng (2015) 33:161–166
Fig. 3 Effects of vertical acceleration on kc under different values of u, b and the ratio d/u
Fig. 4 Effects of vertical acceleration on kc under different
values of backfill soil slope i
u = 35°, d = u and b = 10° as an example: starting
from k = 0, positive increasing values of k produce a
reduction of kc of 15 % when k = 0.5. And this
reduction get to 21.2 % for the case with u = 40°,
d = 3u/4 and b = 10°. Conversely negative decreas-
ing values of k produce an increase of kc of 18 and
27 % when k = -0.5 for the above two cases,
respectively. These results also show that positive
(upward, as assumed in Fig. 1) vertical accelerations
are disadvantage for the stable of wall–soil system,
while negative (downward) vertical accelerations
improve the stability condition.
3.3 Effect of i
The slope of backfill soil will have some effects on the
overall stability of the system under both static and
165
seismic conditions. Figure 4 shows the variation of kc
versus k for the dimensionless weight C = 0.8,
u = 40°, d = 3u/4, b = 10° and for different values
of i. As expected, a sloped backfill soil has some
destructive effects on the stability of the wall–soil
system which can be reflected from the position of kc
curves for different angles of i. It can also be seen from
Fig. 4 that for different slope conditions of backfill
soil, the effects of vertical accelerations are in same
patterns.
4 Conclusions
This work attempts to develop a method to analyze the
seismic stability of gravity retaining walls with
backfill soil under the category of upper bound
theorem of limit analysis. Considering the action of
both horizontal and vertical ground accelerations,
closed-form solutions for the critical acceleration
factor are derived based on the pseudo-static analysis
of soil–wall system.
The study showed that both the roughness and
inclination of the internal wall face have some effects
to the seismic stability of the wall–soil system and the
inclination of the wall should be determined according
to the smoothness of the wall face. The effects of
vertical acceleration on the yield horizontal acceler-
ation coefficient can be different with different
conditions of u, b and d. When the values of u, b
and d are relative small the effects of vertical
acceleration are rather small and may be neglectable.
While the effects of vertical acceleration are consid-
erable large and can’t be neglected if values of u, b
and d are large. It also found that for different slope
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conditions of backfill soil, the effects of vertical
accelerations are in same patterns. Though the
preceding simplified analysis was carried out under
the conservative assumption, hardly verified in real
cases, that peak horizontal acceleration and peak
vertical acceleration occur simultaneously and are in
phase it is expected that this limit analysis method can
be useful because of its simplicity and reasonability.
Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge financial
support from the National Key Basic Research Program of
China (Grant No. 2013CB733201) and the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41472293, 41202258,
41002114). Finally, the authors thank the anonymous reviewers
of this paper for the helpful remarks and discussions.
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